Kasey Screws Up the World (21 page)

I nodded. It may not have been her idea, but she was still participating by selling them.

“Want me to make you one of my flawless and unique
Team Finn
shirts?” Lonnie lifted the fabric of his t-shirt. “Way more flattering than those.”

“I’m staying out of choosing a team until I know more.” She met my eyes. “As in, I need to know if what you did to me was on purpose or not.”

I wished I had an answer she’d approve of. “I’m getting to that.”

Lonnie stole another cream pie from the container before we headed back to our usual table. Once I sat down, I put on both t-shirts, one right over the other. I wasn’t sure which team I belonged on either.

SIX FEET UNDER THE SEA

Posted by Kasey at 8:21 P.M.

Thursday, September 11

Past Mood:
Ditto

SAT Word Of The Day:
Dissolution. Definition: ‘Dis solution to my problem was to sever all ties

Number of unique hits to my blog BEFORE the last post: 307

Number of unique hits to my blog AFTER the last post: 1289

*thud*

Finn tossed the lounge chair onto the balcony, forcing me to hop out of the way. He peered over the balcony and shouted for my sister. My hands flew to my mouth, muffling my own silent scream. I stared at the hollowed out gashes Lara’s fingernails had left behind on my skin. This didn’t happen. Couldn’t have happened.

Finn whipped his head around and when he met my eyes, there were tears in his. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“I—I don’t know.”

He hurried toward me, and I held out my arm so he could help me figure out what to do, fix the situation somehow. But he went right past me, rushing for my room.

I forced my legs to work, but instead of carrying me after Finn, they buckled to the ground. I gripped the lowest rung of the railing for support, and leaned over, pushing my head between the two white bars. A fresh scream ripped from my throat as I spotted Lara face down in the water, motionless. A five story fall.

The contents of my stomach bubbled and then made their own escape out of my throat, following my sister into the ocean below.

Finn came rushing back outside carrying the two life vests stored inside the room. He stopped short when he saw me on the ground, wiping my mouth. “You’re not even going to call for help?”

“I—” I didn’t think of it. Why didn’t I think of it? I pushed myself up and looked to him for guidance. He always liked leading me, and now I needed him to more than ever. I sucked in a deep breath that rattled on the way into my mouth. Finn had a plan. I had to stay calm and find out what it was. “What are you going to do with those?”

“Save your sister.” He slid the orange material over his arms, fingers shaking.

I reached out for the second lifejacket, but he tossed it overboard before I could grab it. “Finn, no, you can’t. Let me go instead! It’s my fault, I should be the one—”

“Haven’t you done enough?” He snapped the plastic buckles together. It sounded so final against the whipping wind. “You’re not the girl I fell in love with, not if you’re capable of this.” He climbed onto the overturned lounge chair, then used it to pull himself onto the rail.

His words sliced through my gut, twisting and turning. He loved me. No, he didn’t. Not anymore. Hot tears congregated for a prison break out of my eyes. I clutched the bottom of his shirt in two bunches and yanked, trying to pull him off the ledge and back onto the safety of the balcony. “Please, Finn, don’t! You’ll get hurt!”

“I already am.” Raising his arms into a prayer position above his head, he dove off the ledge. My fingers were forced to let go of his shirt, and once again, I stared at my empty hands. After a second, I heard another splash.

I choked back nausea and forced myself to look over the ledge. Finn wasn’t visible anywhere. I held my breath, waiting, hoping, shattering. A few seconds later, he shot out of the water yards away from Lara, gasping for breath. His head bobbed as he oriented himself and treaded water toward my sister.

I spun around in circles, my mind at war. I wanted to see if he was okay, if he had Lara, but I needed to call for help. Once again, I followed Finn’s leadership, just like I’d always followed behind in Lara’s footsteps. I was never the leader and now I’d never be the hero.

I spent the next twenty-four hours on the ship locked in either my cabin or my parents’ cabin, helping Mom pack for all four of us. She had stayed behind with me while Dad flew on the medical evacuation helicopter with Lara to a hospital in Miami.

It was the one time I hadn’t wanted Mom to choose me over my sister.

Mom kept her lips pressed tight as she smacked shoes into the suitcase, making as much noise as possible to fill the din. Every time she picked up one of Lara’s dance leotards, she squeezed the material to her chest and sobbed. A thousand apologies flew to my lips, but every time I uttered one, she’d shatter all over again. So I dared not even breathe too loudly as I folded and refolded Lara’s t-shirts until I got them into perfect, crisp squares. I didn’t want to mess up this simple task for Lara, too.

The phone blared in three high-pitched bleats that startled both of us. Mom fumbled over the obstacle of clothes, knocking over a tower of folded t-shirts, in her race to pick up the phone.

“Hello? Hello?” she said into thin air before she even grabbed the receiver. She strung an arm over her chest in a pledge-of-allegiance pose as she listened. “Uh huh.” She sagged against the dresser and her hand slid down her body until it rested at her side. “Thank you for keeping me posted.”

She hung up and bent in front of the dresser, pulling out Lara’s bikinis.

I waited a torturous minute, just staring at her, before I cleared my throat. My voice felt scratchy from a few hours without use. “Is she okay?”

“She’s out of surgery,” was the only answer my mom would give me.

I’d gathered bits and pieces of other information from Mom’s one-sided phone calls over the past twenty-four hours and my interrogation with the police. Finn had saved her life, but she broke a few ribs. Dislocated her hip. There was internal bleeding.

And she may never walk again.

Every time I thought about it, my stomach churned, weighed down by the guilt flowing through my veins and replacing the blood I should have had in there. Blood that should have tied me to Lara.

Thinking about Lara always led me to the other image burned on my retinas. Finn, staring at me as if I were a stranger right before he became the superhero he’d always wanted to be. From gossip I’d overheard at breakfast, I learned that Finn had been treated at a local hospital in Cancun. He’d broken his arm, and that was it. That was it for everything. He was off the ship and I’d never speak to him again.

I shoved my hand into my pocket and pulled out the letter Finn had given to me the second day of the cruise. It was the only thing I had left of him, besides an email address and phone number I’d never use. While my mom was in the bathroom collecting toiletries between heavy sighs, I stared at it, wanting desperately to decipher it, but at the same time, it felt wrong. Like I was no longer privy to the secret information coded just for me. I crumpled it, the jagged edges of the sphere scratching my palm, and threw it against the wall.

And then, like the pathetic girl I was, I smoothed it out and folded it back up as neatly as I’d been folding Lara’s shirts. I let go of Lara, I wouldn’t let go of this.

Even though I’d been out in the bright sun all week, the hospital felt brighter, whiter, claustrophobic. The nurses all wore blank expressions, their colorful scrubs acting only as accents to the negative space. I waited outside Lara’s room for a while to give Mom some privacy with the daughter she loved.

Finally, Dad stepped out and waved me inside. I wanted a cheesy joke to spill from his lips and be punctuated by his goofy smile. Instead I received a somber, “Glad you’re okay.”

It was a statement, not a question, and it was wrong. I wasn’t okay.

With Mom’s back to Lara, my eyes met hers, and I tried as hard as I could to morph them in a way that showed her how sorry I was. She looked out the window, away from me.

Lara’s leg was covered in a thick white cast that looked confining. It robbed her of her thin dancer’s silhouette. At least a dozen vases of flowers brought the room to life, probably from all her friends. I wondered if there was one from Denise.

“Can you guys leave us alone for a minute?” I asked my parents.

Mom glanced at Dad with a horrified look, as if I might try to hurt my sister again in their absence, but Dad swooped in with a hand to her back and ushered her toward the door.

“No! Don’t.” Lara’s hands balled into fists. “I don’t feel like talking right now.”

Mom tried to stop and Dad said to her, “We’ll be right outside if anything happens.”

My parents didn’t trust me anymore. My parents were
afraid
of me.

I looked down at the floor and clasped my hands. “Lara, I’m so so sorry.” I needed a thousand
so’s
to convey how truly sorry I was.

“I understand how things are now. What I mean to you.” A tear slid down her cheek. She tried to cover it by rolling her eyes.

“I’m really glad you’re…” I was going to say
okay
, but she wasn’t.
Alive
didn’t seem appropriate either.

As I tried to come up with a replacement word, Lara let out a forced laugh. “Just say you’re glad I’m hurt. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I didn’t want this to happen.” I burst into tears, though I was amazed I’d kept them suppressed for this long.

“Yeah you did. You said it yourself. The talent show was your one chance to be a star, and I had plenty others. You couldn’t handle that.” Her voice cracked.

I wanted to keep defending myself but every excuse that came to my lips felt like just that. An excuse.

“I give up.” She covered her face with her hands. “You can have the spotlight. Go back home and take my place. You win, Kasey, it’s all yours.”

“I doubt anyone will talk to me after what happened.”

“They don’t know.” She scrunched her eyes closed, I hoped shutting me out and not dealing with pain. “No one knows how I got hurt and I’d like to keep it that way. Keeps me mysterious.”